Day 40: Cartagena to Alicante

March 29, 2025

Heart

Comment

We had had a good look at the website that identifies birding spots in Europe (birdingplaces.eu) and with it we identified several spots more or less on our way to Alicante today.

We put in flags at potential birding spots.

Many of these spots were on the "Mar Menor", which is the largest saltwater lagoon in Spain. It is shallow and salty, making it a hit with birds. The lagoon is separated from the sea by "La Manga" (the sleeve), a 22 km long sandbar, which as it appeared to us from the opposite shore, it completely built up with high rise hotels.

Before we could reach the Mar Menor from Cartagena, we had to cross over a mountainous peninsula. This accounted for most of the about 900 meters of climb today.

I looked on these hills as just more and more hills in Spain. But things would level out soon.

The town of Los Nietos. I remember the little family on the left. They were not at the crosswalk, but we stopped so they could pass.

The map shows a little pond at our first Mar Menor stop, but we found it to be dried up.

Even so we did spot an Oystercatcher on the actual Mar Menor shore.

Watch this, now we'll get the Oystercatcher in flight!

We set off again, quickly running into more peletons. They differ a bit as to how much of the road they try to eat up.

We were heading for our next birding spot, when we found the way blocked by a market. We have found that markets here just take over main roads, and leave travelers to figure a way around for themselves. In our case, having seen that they had chicken BBQ, it was more a case of figuring where to park to get in on it!

They were interested to learn that we really don't have this at markets in Canada.

The rest of the market was at least 1/2 km long

A big proportion of the sellers had clothes or dry goods.

But there were lots of fruits and veggies too.

Oranges, of course. These look like "orchard run", just the way you want to buy fruit.

The strawberries were remarkably good. They had to come from the large greenhouse operations, like at el Rocio.

It looks like this girl has a silver hat, but the photo was for the churros in her hands.

The green containers must be how the vendor buys the various olive products. He was then filling very large clear mixed containers for the customers.

One we had our chicken and potatoes, plus strawberries and grapes!, we went over to Dia grocery store. We know they have this fresh orange juice maker!

Now we needed a place with parking and a shady bench, to eat our market treasures. We found it, aways down the road. There was a bonus there, in that the trees had Monk Parakeets:

The most fun came toward the far end of the big lagoon, when you can go out a bit onto the Manga. There is water then on both sides of the road, and flamingos and other birds as close as we have seen them. The water on either side differs in colour, with the broader lagoon being deep blue, and green, and the more inshore water being violet.

We had a great time snapping pictures of the birds, even picking up some that we new to us, such as the female Ruff, below.

This Flamingo is looking like a ghost. Needs to go find some shrimp!

We had other birding spots we could try, up by Torre Vieja. We got onto the N332 and zipped up to that area. We had wanted to go to Los Montesinos, between the two lakes, but ended up at La Mata and rather far from the water.

Again following our car based policy of finding hotels not in the old city core, we saw little of Alicante as we made for our Travelodge. We did have one slight excitement, though, as we turned down something that was not a street, more like a super broad sidewalk, and followed it for a block. It ended at a real road, with the typical 8" or so sidewalk to road step down. We weren't going to bounce the rental car down that, and no way could we back out! It reminds me of a Pete Singer song: "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" (the big fool says Push On). So that's what we did: hung a left and continued on sidewalk until the next driveway. That driveway turned out to belong to our hotel! They quickly ushered us into their locked parking compound, before we could get into any further trouble!

Tomorrow, to Valencia!

Birds spotted this year: 162. Five added today!

Today's ride: 6 km (4 miles)
Total: 1,074 km (667 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	5
Comment on this entry	Comment	0